You have to understand that the Rangers are making lineup and in-game ice-time decisions with an eye toward next Tuesday’s trade deadline.

That’s why Valeri Kamensky is on the power play and on the ice in the final minute with the goaltender pulled as he was in Friday’s loss to Pittsburgh, even though everyone knows he has no business being there in place of someone like Jeff Ulmer, who actually looks as if he’s hungry to make something happen on every shift.

That’s why Alexei Gusarov gets major minutes even after committing the kind of unpardonable gaffe he did against the Penguins early in the second period on Friday when he coughed up the puck without resistance to Mario Lemieux, who immediately swept in to score with absurd ease on a breakaway.

Maybe someone will see something positive from Kamensky and deal for him. Maybe St. Louis, which has had some interest in Gusarov, will overlook Friday’s blunder and imagine the veteran inside a solid infrastructure. Maybe someone will take a shot at Sylvain Lefebvre, who, mighty coincidentally, has played a more robust game lately. And there is every chance that someone will bite on Rich Pilon, who conveniently enough came up with a hamstring pull after a pair of big-time physical efforts early this week against Philadelphia and Ottawa.

And maybe it’s the eye on the trade deadline that prompted the Rangers to make an unusual personnel decision as they prepare for a match this afternoon in Nashville against the Predators. For when the Blueshirts learned that Sandy McCarthy had been suspended for this afternoon’s game as a result of his display toward the end of Friday’s match, the team recalled defenseman Jason Doig from Hartford rather than a forward such as Tony Tuzzolino or Michal Grosek.

Without having replaced Theo Fleury on the roster, the Rangers thus will face Nashville – which leads the Blueshirts by five points in the overall standings, and doesn’t that make you burst with pride? – with 11 forwards and seven defensemen. It will mark the first time this season that Ron Low will go with such an alignment.

Which makes you wonder whether someone out there has expressed some interest in Doig, the 24-year-old who has spent the entire season with the Wolf Pack.

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McCarthy, who received a misconduct and game misconduct for questioning the wisdom of the officiating crew after a late third-period incident involving Kryzsztof Oliwa, was suspended under Rule 41(b), cited for abuse of officials for the second time within a 41-game period. McCarthy had previously been hit with an abuse-of-officials game misconduct against Atlanta on Jan. 29.

Though Rob Schick claims that a minor may be assessed for intent to charge, there’s no language in either the NHL Rulebook or Officiating Casebook that supports the referee for the call he made on Jan Hlavac Friday night when the winger went after but missed Darius Kasparaitis. While Rule 85 defines slashing as “the act of swinging a player’s stick at an opponent whether contact is made or not,” Rule 47 defines charging as “the actions of a player, who, as a result of distance traveled, shall violently check an opponent in any manner.”

The Rangers are planning to fly into Newark immediately following today’s game and then stay in a Manhattan hotel to be ready for tomorrow night’s scheduled Garden match against the Islanders, which will be in jeopardy if predictions of a major storm come true.